A Humanistic Consequentialism for Film and Media Studies

2021 ◽  
pp. 40-53
Author(s):  
Wyatt Moss-Wellington
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Moral Luck ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Ethical Analysis ◽  
Future Thinking ◽  
Film And Media Studies ◽  
Strict Requirement

This chapter outlines the framework for ethical analysis that will be carried through readings in the latter half of the book. It interrogates the reasons behind a dominant virtue ethics approach in film and media studies, and describes an alternative humanistic consequentialist approach. Consequentialism displaces the evaluation of others and their moral being, including the heroic or villainous qualities of fictive characters, in favor of a future-thinking concern that is more self-implicating, while humanist ethics integrates care and understanding of moral failures and the vagaries of moral luck. Humanistic consequentialism emerges as a pressure we can put on one another to be aware of the results of our behavior rather than a strict requirement to maximize the hedonic results of our actions; implications for the “thought experiments” of media are discussed.

Film and Media Studies

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 541-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerd Gemünden
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Film And Media Studies

Between Erlebnis and Erfahrung: Cinema Experience with Benjamin

Paragraph ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 292-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Elsaesser
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Film And Media Studies ◽  
The Media ◽  
Bodily Sensations ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Media Event ◽  
Sudden Motion ◽  
Emotion And Affect

The ‘turn’ to emotion and affect in film and media studies may take its distance from earlier ways of understanding spectatorial involvement (modelled on psychoanalytic notions of identification). But such approaches, whether cognitivist in intent, or inspired by phenomenology, also return to an earlier interest in bodily sensations and somatic responses when exposed to sudden motion and moving images (associated with ideas such as innervation, shock and over-stimulation). The essay proposes to bring Walter Benjamin into the debate, with a term central to his idea of modernity, namely ‘experience’, and to revive his distinction between Erfahrung and Erlebnis. Noting certain features of excess and liminiality in contemporary cinema, and mapping them across the three distinct domains of body, time and agency, Benjamin's own attempt to locate the emotional core of the technical media is reappraised. Grounded in the peculiar variability but also interdependence of place, narration and perception, the cinema would then appear to provide Erlebnis without Erfahrung, a state formerly associated with trauma, but now the very definition of the media event.

Urban Mediation and Mobility in Istanbul

Transfers ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-136
Author(s):  
Dorit Müller
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
European Network ◽  
European Capital Of Culture ◽  
Ample Opportunity ◽  
Extensive Analysis ◽  
Broad Scope ◽  
Film And Media Studies

The European Network for Cinema and Media Studies (NECS) held its fifth annual conference “Urban Mediations” from June 24 to 27, 2010 in the European Capital of Culture 2010, Istanbul. A wide variety of scholars and researchers in the field of cinema, film, and media studies, but also archivists or film and media professionals were invited. The broad scope theme of “urban mediations” provided ample opportunity for extensive analysis and discussion of media and urbanity theories by the attendees. In more than 80 panels, with four talks each, various questions could be discussed. For example: How are city spaces represented and created in different media? What urban practices and aesthetics develop when using “media”? To what extent do new media forms influence future urban developments or make them possible in the first place? How does media shape city-human interaction?

What Happens in a Hindi Film?

2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 492-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Inden
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Film And Media Studies ◽  
Historically Situated ◽  
Hindi Film

AbstractThis paper looks at the popular Hindi film and its treatment in film and media studies. It criticises the assumption that “entertainment” is a simple universal, arguing that it needs to be seen rather as a problematic, historic institution. The author attempts a preliminary reconstruction of Indian discourse on film and entertainment, a discourse marginalised or ignored by Eurocentric scholarship on film in South Asia. Central to the Indian discourse are historically situated notions of extravaganza, of spectacle (tamasha) in a paradise setting, and a focus on emotional experiences, those of wonder and of ecstasy and despair. The articulation of these elements has changed but continue to be constitutive of the popular Hindi film.

scholarly journals Furtado, Gustavo Procopio. Documentary Filmmaking in Contemporary Brazil: Cinematic Archives of the Present. Oxford UP, 2019

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew C. Rajca
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Documentary Films ◽  
Theoretical Discussion ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Film And Media Studies ◽  
Documentary Filmmaking ◽  
Selection Of

In Documentary Filmmaking in Contemporary Brazil: Cinematic Archives of the Present, film and media studies scholar Gustavo Procopio Furtado makes an impressive contribution to the study of documentary films in Brazil. Consisting of three interrelated sections with two chapters each, the book engages with the concepts of documentary and archive from a variety of perspectives—combining socio-political and theoretical discussion with close analysis of a well-chosen selection of contemporary documentaries.

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